News

THE GREEN LIGHT TOUR - SOUTH AUSTRALIAN EVENT

The Adelaide event was held at 28 Leigh Street and was attended by 80 urban greening experts.

It was the second event in the national tour and was held in partnership with the Adelaide and Mount Lofty Ranges Natural Resources Management Board, the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes (CAUL) Hub and with the support of Water Sensitive SA, SA Water, TREENET, Seed Consulting Services and AILA SA.

Speakers at the event included representatives from the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure, Water Sensitive SA, Resilient East, Seed Consulting Services, the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, the Co-Design Studio and the City of Burnside.

The Key topics covered on the day were: the use of heat mapping to inform green infrastructure investment; best practice for translating the cooling benefits of trees into tools; the necessity of better community engagement to work together on greening efforts; and utilising innovation to communicate the broad value of trees in creating more liveable neighbourhoods.

A major highlight from the day was the launch of the Urban Forest Interactive website by Ben Seamark from the City of Burnside. The tool is an innovative way of interacting with trees in a council area and has been inspired by similar projects developed in New York and Melbourne.

An interactive workshop was held in the afternoon and provided attendees with the opportunity to deep dive with the experts, who each facilitated a discussion table.

The outcomes from these table discussions are outlined below:

Table 1: Discussing best practice for translating the cooling benefits of trees into tools with Dr Kerry Nice from the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities

Key Takeaways:

There is lots of data and knowledge being shared but it needs pilot projects and champions to move it forward

Raw data is something that can inform policy but to get broader buy in there needs to be a larger narrative

Siloed departments with different ways of communicating makes sharing difficult

Suggested next steps:

A coordinated State or Federal assessment of all the health and economic benefits that urban greening provides

Development of pilot projects using the existing data to exemplify best practice for others to scale and replicate

Table 2: Discussing the Urban Forest Interactive dashboard with Ben Seamark from the City of Burnside

Key Takeaways:

It is vital that we continue to build community connection and engagement with trees

Mapping projects allow you to share new tree planting and succession planning details with the community in a valuable way

Trying to achieve something innovative within your organisation will require you to stick to your vision and to keep going even when it gets tough

Suggested next steps:

Potentially developing the platform into an app, this has the capacity to increase use by residents when they are wanting to log information on trees

Explore the opportunity to share the tool with other local councils

Continue to develop greater community ownership with initiatives, this could include an ‘Adopt-a-tree’ program